OPENCoastS project

Research Team
Point of Contact: Anabela Oliveira and Alberto Azevedo, LNEC, Portugal

Project description
An interactive platform to generate on-demand forecasts based on SCHISM is under development at LNEC. The portal guides the users in the generation of forecast systems and provides the required computational resources. Developments started for the Portuguese coast, and a preliminary description is given here (in Portuguese). Starting in January 2018, the platform will be extended to the European coasts in the scope of the project EOSC-HUB.

North-Baltic Sea study

Project description
The goal of this project is to understand the dynamics in the two inter-connected basins of North and Baltic Seas, the multiple straits connecting them, and more specifically on the temporal and spatial variability of physical processes. To achieve these goals, we have built a 3D unstructured-grid model SCHISM for this complex system.

The picture below shows the gravity overflow from Danish Strait into Baltic Sea.

Jacob, B., Stanev, E.V., and Zhang, Y. (in press) Local and remote response of the North Sea dynamics to morphodynamic changes in the Wadden Sea, Ocean Dynamics.

San Francisco Bay and Delta

Project description
Bay-Delta SCHISM is an application of the 3D open source SCHISM hydrodynamic and water quality suite to the San Francisco Bay Delta estuary. The project is a collaboration between the California Department of Water Resources and the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences (VIMS), College of William & Mary.

The goal of our project is to develop an open-source, cross-scale multidimensional model suitable to answer flow and water quality questions involving large extents of the Bay-Delta system over periods of several years. Target applications include:

Habitat creation and conveyance options under BDCP;

Salinity intrusion changes under drought or sea level rise;

Velocity changes following the installation of drought barriers;

Fate of mercury produced in the Liberty Island complex;

Temperature, flow and food production in the estuary as part of a 3-model full life cycle bioenergetic model of salmon (as participants in the SESAME project).

Forecast of general circulation around Taiwan

A multi-scale Regional Ocean Current Forecast OpeRational System (ROCFORS) is developed at Central Weather Bureau (CWB), Taiwan, since 2008. This system has coupled 4 different model domains, i.e. from the Pacific to the seas around Taiwan. The modeling system has been constructed based on ROMS and SCHISM and implemented for daily operation. Initial field is derived and analyzed from HYCOM and RTOFS daily forecast. Models are driven by meteorological predictions from NCEP GFS and WRF developed at CWB. Daily operational products are presented on CWB website. A cross-scale system based solely on SCHISM will be implemented in the future to replace the existing multi-level nested system.

Assessment of potential tidal and wave energy around Australia

Point of Contact: A/Professor. Alessandro Toffoli, Huy Quang Tran
(Department of Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne Australia)

Project description

We built up an-unstructured modelling system (SCHISM-WWM) for master students’ research projects to study potential tidal and wave energy around Australia. The research aim is to obtain high level of accuracy in predicting tidal and wave energy in this region as previous studies have not been achieved. Our configurations can be tightly coupled between circulation and wave models in both 2D and 3D modes. Therefore, this modelling system can be extended for coastal erosion, inundation, storm surge, biological studies. For further information, please contact us.

SESAME

Project description
SESAME will couple stream and estuarine models with a basin-scale ocean model in order to simultaneously model the entire early life history (freshwater, estuarine, and coastal ocean habitats) of the Chinook salmon migrating through the San Francisco Bay estuary system.

SESAME will provide the ecosystem models needed as the basis of the ecosystem-based management and ecological risk assessment framework necessary to improve management of water and fishery resources in California.

Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident

Research Team
IMMSP (Ukraine): Vladimir Maderich, Igor Brovchenko

Project description
This study evaluates and compares the models used to analyze the transportation and
deposition of radioactive materials that were released in
to the environment after the Tokyo
Electric Power Compan’s
Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident on
March 11, 2011. A Working Group for Model Intercomparison was formed in July 2012
under the Subcommittee of Investigation on the Environmental Contamination Caused by the Nuclear Accident in the Sectional Committee on Nuclear Accident, the Committee
Comprehensive Synthetic Engineering, Science Council of Japan (SCJ). The purpose of this
working group (SCJ WG) is to compare existing model results and to assess the uncertainties
in the simulation results. The emerging knowledge will be invaluable for various applications
designed to mitigate environmental contamination in wide areas. The working group solicited
international colleagues and groups to provide their model simulation results for the
intercomparison.

Tsunami

SCHISM has been certified by National Tsunami Hazard Program (NTHMP, 2012) as a tsunmai inundation model, after passing various benchmarks stipulated by NOAA/PMEL.
It has been used to generate official inundation maps for the state of Oregon, spearheaded by OR Department of Geology ad Mineral Industries (DOGAMI), under the auspice of NTHMP.

SURA

SELFE/SCHISM was used in an IOOS sponsored super-regional testbed for coastal inundation, led by Dr. Rick Luettich (UNC). The testbed focuses on two coastal regions that are prone to inundation hazard: Gulf of Mexico and Gulf of Maine.

Sample images
Fig. 2 shows an example application of the fully coupled SELFE-WWM and a simple sediment model to hurricane Ike (2008) in Gulf of Mexico. The full results are being published (Teng et al. 2012).

Fig. 2 Domain used to simulate hurricane Ike in Gulf of Mexico. The comparison plot shows the primary surge and forerunner simulated with different physical formulations (c/o Y.C. Teng)

Columbia River estuary and plume

Project description
Columbia River estuary and plume circulation presents a formidable challenge for hydrodynamic models due to the interaction between strong tides, meteorological forcing, high river discharge, and strong stratification. SELFE was originally developed to address these challenges and some details can be found in the SELFE paper.

The SELFE-enabled virtual Columbia River is a skill-assessed 4D (space-time) simulation environment that offers multiple representations of circulation processes, variability and change across river-to-shelf scales. Circulation includes water levels, salinity, temperature, and velocities.

Marine Submersion (Xynthia Storm Surge)

Project description
In February 2010, the storm Xynthia hit the central part of the Bay of Biscay severely. The storm surge locally exceeded 1.5m (Bertin et al., 2011) and peaked at the same time as a high spring tide, causing the flooding of large areas of the low-lying coast. Analysis results show the wave processes are important in the storm surge. The 2DH SCHISM with WWM coupled model was applied in the research. And a highly refined flooding multiscale grid was developed to catch the pysical processes of flooding.

Portuguese coastal systems

There are 3 related projects for this system.

A nowcast-forecast system for for Portuguese coastal systemsResearch Team
LNEC: Anabela Oliveira, André Fortunato, Marta Rodrigues, Alberto Azevedo, João Palha Fernandes
OHSU: António Melo Baptista, Joseph Zhang, Bill Howe, Paul J. Turner, Charles Seaton
VIMS: Joseph Zhang
Project description
The goal of this project is to integrate complementary research strengths at the two institutions towards the development of a nowcast-forecast system for
water quality prediction in estuarine and coastal waters. The Portuguese partners will provide the water quality models and
the American institution will provide the innovative nowcast-forecast technology.Project web siteNowcast-forecast web

Improvement of a morphodynamic model applied to tidal inlet environmentsResearch Team
LNEC: André Fortunato, Anabela Oliveira, Xavier BertinProject description
Tidal inlets are among the most dynamic environments along the world coastlines while social-economic activities are there concentrated. These problems are particularly relevant in Portugal due to its extensive coastline and the existence of many tidal inlets of social, environmental and economic importance. In the perspective of a sustainable development, it is essential to understand and to be able to predict the long-term evolution of these systems. To achieve these goals, one of the most promising avenues is the development of morphodynamic models, which consist of a set of modules to simulate tidal hydrodynamics, wave propagation, sediment transport and bottom evolution. This project aims at contributing to the advance of an existing morphodynamic modeling system (MORSYS2D) that is under development at the host institution (LNEC). Project web site

Towards operational forecasting of ecosystem dynamics: Benchmarking and Grid-enabling of an ecological model (BGEM)Research Team
LNEC: Anabela Oliveira, André Fortunato, Marta Rodrigues and João Palha Fernandes
CMOP: António Melo Baptista, Joseph Zhang, Bill Howe, Charles Seaton, Paul J. TurnerProject description
This proposal aims to integrate complementary research strengths at the two institutions to improve and validate a sophisticated ecological modeling system for operational forecasting of ecosystem dynamics based on grid computing resources. The Portuguese partner will provide the ecological model and the expertise on grid-enabling of numerical models. The American partner will provide the expertise on parallel computing and the benchmark for validation and inter-model comparison.

Water Quality in the Chesapeake Bay Region

The Chesapeake Bay and the Coastal Bays of the Maryland/Virginia Atlantic shore are highly valuable and productive ecosystems that are increasingly threatened by degraded water quality and loss of habitat due to both anthropogenic and natural disturbances.

In an effort to reverse this trend, federal and state governments have implemented a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) program to control point source and non-point source pollution in each watershed.

In order to quantify these controls and better understand cause and effect relationships, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science is developing numerical hydrodynamic and water quality models and linking them together as a tool for predicting and measuring success of the TMDL effort.

Virginia Institute of Marine Science is involved in two TMDL projects in the Chesapeake Bay region:

TMDL scenario development and implementation for the Maryland and Virginia Coastal Bays system.

Impact on localized water quality resulting from allocation of nutrient loads to dredged material contaminant facilities in Baltimore Harbor.

Aquaculture and coastal pollutants modelling (New Zealand)

Application description
Aquaculture and other coastal developments in New Zealand have the potential to place increasing pressures on coastal environments. The Cawthron Institute and MetOcean Solutions Limited have been collaborating to produce open-source community models for coastal environments around New Zealand to aid in coastal effects assessments. We are presently utilising and building upon SCHISM community modelling tools associated with Lagrangian and Eularian transport for a range of coastal transport applications (e.g. faecal indicator bacteria, nutrients, oil spills).

We have a number of collaborative projects under-way, but are currently working towards simplifying the set up and analysis of tracers for modelling a range of chemical and biological constituents in aquaculture and coastal discharge assessments.

Sample images

Fig. 7 shows SCHISM Matlab GUI (currently under development) with a bathymetric map of the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand.